Even poor people want respect.

The Congress Working Committee is to meet today to discuss future strategy following the virtual annihilation in the recent elections. But will anything change? Not a chance. The meeting will be a complete joke with The Family pretending to take responsibility and others shouting them down with vows of complete allegiance. It will be decided that there was a failure of communication wherein the people failed to understand the wonderful policies of entitlement that the Congress had passed which gave people the right to food, education and handouts. There will be regret that they had no time to pass entitlements to free housing and healthcare. What will not be said, but is implicit in the charade, is the entitlement of The Family to live a life of total luxury, protected by the state, without doing a day's productive work or any accountability. Is there no one else in this country of 1.25 billion people with the talent and vision to lead the Congress? It is this servility that blinds them to the reasons for this humiliation. Congress fellows seem bemused by the ingratitude of the people after all the goodies they had distributed. The trouble is whatever they did was in bad faith, designed only to bribe the ' vote bank ' and not to enhance people's lives. It was disrespectful. They are very proud of the MGNREGA scheme which pays the rural poor for 100 days of the year. Thus a man and his wife can get paid for 200 days in the year for doing nothing. Surely, they should be overjoyed. Trouble is that it increased labor costs by putting a floor beneath wages and resulted in food inflation which hurt the very poor they were supposed to be helping. If the scheme had paid for genuine work, such as improving rural roads, putting toilets in every home, securing the dignity of women, or improving school buildings so that children are comfortable then even the most illiterate would have seen long term benefits from the scheme. The Aadhar card was started because migrant laborers have no fixed address and hence cannot access benefit schemes. Other than a person's genetic makeup this is the most rigorous identity card imaginable with photograph, prints of all 10 fingers and iris scans of both eyes. But why were we, the middle class forced to obtain it when we get nothing from the government. If we could obtain a new passport just by quoting our Aadhar number or if it cut out the need for the Know Your Customer irritation when opening a bank account or buying a new SIM card we would joyfully accept it. Instead it was seen as another intrusion into our privacy. Its architect, Mr Nandan Nilekani was soundly defeated by 230,000 votes. Rightly so. The poor are not dumb creatures. They also deserve respect.